REALTIME

Photon Realtime
Features

Develop and launch realtime multiplayer games globally whether you are an indie developer or a AAA studio.
Create synchronous or asynchronous gameplay and code custom webhooks.

Realtime Cloud

Photon Realtime games are hosted in our globally distributed Photon Cloud to guarantee low latency and shortest round-trip times for your players worldwide.

Multiplayer

Connect, Match and Play:
Photon Realtime's core provides the rock-solid foundation for any type of room based multiplayer game.
You concentrate on building a great title while we take care of game servers and hosting.

Matchmaking API

You match players into games randomly or by parameterized searches.
Or you create a list of open rooms and let players pick one.
It works. Reliably. On mobiles, PCs, Consoles and in the web.

Sync and Async Games

Freely switch between synchronous and asynchronous turn-based game modes.
Keep rooms alive: let players rejoin rooms in case of disconnects or in case of resurrecting a game.

Cloud Save

Persist your game state to a cloud or your own storage via HTTP webhooks. The state has all relevant game data: player data, room data, properties and the event cache.

Cross-Platform

You develop and build directly for your chosen gaming platform, with your favorite engine or framework:
Photon is the leading cross-platform multiplayer service and the world's #1 for Unity games.

Highest Scalability

Games built with Photon Realtime scale seamlessly and automatically in the Photon Cloud:
from just a few to tens of thousands of concurrent users.
Fair and transparent pricing included. Proven. Successfully.

Customization

What multiplayer game do you want to build?
FPS or arcade shooter? RPG or RTS?
Racer or Sports? MOBA or TD?
Another kind of action game?
Photon Realtime supports any type of room based games on any popular gaming platform. See for yourself ...

Client To Server

Photon powered game clients transmit billions of messages each hour through the Photon Cloud.
Whether with Reliable UDP, TCP, HTTP or Websockets:
Photon's high speed client to server-architecture is the game industry's most solid foundation for your title.

Unmatched Flexibility

Photon is super flexible:
you can match an iOS Game Center user with someone using Google Play Services,
authenticate a user via Facebook or add a custom authentication,
utilize a gaming service such as PlayFab or hook in your own backend.

Worry-Free Pricing

Fair and Transparent: 100% usage based on a concurrent users (CCU) basis.
Flexible: Start with a FREE plan, up- or downgrade at any time.
Worry-free: no immediate cap when exceeding CCU with any monthly plan.
Perfect for your game's launch.

Photon Cloud - The Power Behind

All applications you develop with our suite of Photon products will run in our Photon Cloud. Here we take care of service hosting, operations and scaling.
You can fully concentrate on building your game or app!

Photon Enterprise Cloud - Dedicated Servers & Custom Code Plug-ins

In a nutshell the Photon Enterprise Cloud is like our well established public Photon Cloud and adds the following features: Runs on dedicated servers, provides guaranteed service levels (SLAs) and high priority support. Another big plus: You can run your own authoritative server logic via Plug-ins.
Typical Photon Enterprise Cloud scenarios are apps with 10,000 concurrent users or more, bigger game projects that need authoritative server logic or companies whose compliance policies restrict them to dedicated resources.

Scalable, Reliable & Always Connects

All Photon Cloud products are based on a client to server architecture, the most stable solution for multiplayer games! In peer-to-peer architectures clients often cannot connect due to NAT punch-through issues. This problem is even worse in mobile networks. With the Photon Cloud your games will always connect.
Our operations team monitors servers 24/7 and can scale up required resources at any time. Whether your game needs capacity for hundreds or for hundreds of thousands of concurrent users: we scale it to your demands.

Hosted Where Your Players Are

Low latency is an essential requirement in realtime multiplayer games. For this reason Photon Cloud is hosted in all major world regions to provide your players with a minimum latency.
Games that depend on low latency, like FPS or RTS game types, connect the players to the nearest region. Games that are able to handle higher latency, like turnbased game types, can connect all players to the same region.

The Perfect Partnership

Photon Cloud integrates perfectly with other services.
When you ask us to recommend a service that is complementing Photon's feature-set:
"PlayFab," is our answer.
With PlayFab and the tightly integrated Photon Cloud you get the market's most complete package for online game development!

The world's leading multiplayer cloud service provides all core features needed to match & connect tens of thousands of users in realtime and turnbased games.
Whether you are a one man team or a AAA studio: Photon is the fastest way to build and launch multiplayer games globally.

PlayFab is the fast and free way to launch and operate your mobile, PC or console game.
It is a complete set of cloud-based backend services built exclusively for games.
Live operations tools help you maximize retention and monetizing.

Game Server Hosting:
Operations and scaling services is all cared for by us.
You concentrate on building your game.